Weekly Links: November 9, 2020

Java

How the HotSpot and Graal JVMs Execute Java Code

Here’s something you don’t see every day: A conference talk from 2020, delivered in front of a live audience! It’s from QCon London in early March. Those were the days, my friend… What is it about? Ah, yes. We have heard a lot about Graal VM. It turns our Java code into small & fast native programs. But Graal VM is also a traditional JVM, like good ol’ HotSpot. Unlike Hotspot, it is written in Java. This talk dives into the details of class compilation and execution. As with many QCon talks, you can watch the video, listen to the audio version, or read the transcript. Exemplary!

OpenJDK, JDKs and Every Java Acronym in Between

Acronyms surrounding the JDK are quite an alphabet soup. Quick: What’s a JEP? And what’s JKV? If you didn’t know the answers immediately, then read up with Helen’s article.

Still scratching your head? Yeah, I tricked you: “JKV” has nothing to do with Java. It stands for “John Knox Village”, a retirement community in the U.S. 😏

Frameworks

Reactive Microservices Framework Helidon SE

Microservices have become increasingly popular. They need fast start-up times and low memory consumption. Java lacks these features. Spring Boot, the leading Java framework, was slow to embrace this. Only by next fall will it fully support Graal VM native compilation. JEE, the other incumbent, was slow to do anything: It hasn’t released new features for three years. So new frameworks filled this void. Oracle calls its challenger Helidon. It comes in two flavors: “MP” is the imperative, “servlet version”. “SE” is the reactive version. This article is a tutorial for the reactive version. And if you find out what “SE” actually stands for, let me know!

The Road to MicroProfile 4.0

Talking about “Helidon MP”: The “MP” stands for “MicroProfile”. That’s an Eclipse project, best described as “Spring Boot for microservices with JEE parts”. It started out of frustration with the JEE stand-still in 2016. With three releases a year, it’s been a rather free-wheeling effort since. But earlier this year, the Eclipse Foundation made things more formal. They demanded an Eclipse Working Group as the project leadership body. So the 4.0 release, scheduled for June 2020, still isn’t done. And we’ll only get two releases next year. Growing pains! But it’s great to have a JEE take on microservices in Java. Framework competition gives us better frameworks!

Releases

Spring Boot 2.2.11

This release has 50 bug fixes, documentation improvements, and dependency upgrades. Yep, Spring now highlights “documentation improvements”. That’s amazing: They believe developers read the documentation! Updating Stack Overflow answers would be a much better use of time here…

Spring Boot 2.3.5

2.3.x is still the most current Spring Boot release. Spring Boot 2.4 is only scheduled for release by November 12. That is also the release date of Sony’s PlayStation 5 in some parts of the world. Anyhow, this Spring Boot release has 92 bug fixes, documentation improvements, and dependency upgrades. No documentation jokes here.